When Hating Oneself, the World, and God Seems Like Right Reason

There are times when — all too innocently, because we have not been mindful of what is before us — we give too much license to a dead past that cannot be changed, and then we lose our handle on things. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we conjure from the ether of our past a solitary-but-sharply-outlined idea, and then suddenly, one after another, memories begin to fall upon us, like bright orbs called from galaxies far beyond, and much better kept in the distance. Our disappointing families and imperfect parents, our closely held secrets and sins and sorrows and regrets, given too much free reign, begin to dominate us. They wreak havoc on our emotions and then begin to drain our spirits until we are depleted and depressed — all trust, all hope diminished.

When we get to that place, we begin to hate everyone — or to imagine that we do — and to wonder about that Being people call “God”; we think if that Being exists, it’s probably worth hating too, for creating so much that is warped and destructive; for allowing death and devastation such as we are seeing in the wake of Haiyan; for permitting innocence to be stolen, and hearts to be broken, and evil to flourish all-too-widely.

When we reach the point where God seems worth hating, we have also unavoidably entered into self-hatred. We can’t help it; we are fallen and the same instincts to idolatry that cause us to make godlings of the things and circumstances and people we love are also at work when everything becomes about our hatred and our hurts and where our darker feelings may safely be projected.

How do we protect ourselves from falling into this accidental deterioration of our spiritual and emotional health? Clearly, we cannot erase memory, and even if we could, the price would be enormous — it would entail a shutting-down that fragments wholeness and seeks to deny much of what has helped to make us who we are, in our weaknesses, yes, but also in our strengths.

To train the mind toward optimism, or to choose to think the best of a circumstance, or of a person, is no frivolous thing. To be sure, an outlook so positive that it blinds one to real possibilities of harm, or leads to reckless behavior, is unbalanced foolishness. Determined optimism however — the intent to seek what is good rather than focus on the bad — has an element of subversion to it; it willfully admits into one’s thinking a level of vulnerability that can open us up to charges of naivete and (even worse) of being out-of-touch with the prevailing winds — an deplorable weakness in our cynical age.

For some, that can seem downright dangerous.

It’s a danger worth dancing with, though, particularly if it leads us away from the shadowlands of despair.

What trains the mind, steadies the heart and grounds the soul?Psalmody. A regular praying of the psalms, every day, helps to form the hopeful mind — it does that by exposing to us the simple fact that no matter how unique we believe our situation to be, or how profoundly we are feeling something, it has happened before; those feelings have been felt before. The psalms are the perfect reflection of the human condition, and nothing works so potently to counteract self-absorption and bring bouyancy to hope than the realization that this song:

I have become like a pelican in the wilderness,
like an owl in desolate places.
I lie awake and I moan
like some lonely bird on a roof.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion,
who fills your life with good things,
renewing your youth like an eagle’s.

An email correspondent prompts these thoughts — a young man who is struggling, trying not to stumble into the dark holes, even as he feels their edges through his soles, trips against them in his soul.

I can only tell him what I know, but it’s a thing I know deeply:

We do nothing to earn the love of God, and there is nothing we can do to lose it — we can only reject it.

We are loved into being.

We did nothing to deserve that. Our whole being came about because the love of the Creator said “yes” to his own intention; the Creator assented to his own desire, and brought forth you and me.

God’s gifts are never withdrawn, and his first and most fundamental gift to each of us is the love upon which our lives are initiated and formed, no matter what shape they take. The love is there, forever; even in our rejection, it remains.

It is pointless to reject what we cannot stop; the fullness of our formation is rooted in our willingness to let this relentless love rain down upon us, and fill us, imbue us, saturate us until our fallen-ness is fallen away, and we finally know the fulfillment of God’s deepest longings for us — ransomed; reclaimed; restored; healed.

The Creator has deemed us worth creating, and that brings us the only measure of worthiness we need worry about. The approach to God, and the acceptance of his love, has nothing at all to do with worthiness. It’s all about willingness.

This is a great mystery, but it’s true, and it is wholly trustworthy.

Everything begins with willingness. God said “yes” to his own willingness, and all was created, down to you, down to me. Our willingness in return, our open-hearted, trusting “yes” is all that is required for our lives to become co-creative with God, in whatever way he directs.

Everyday, “yes.” Everyday, a constant conversio, a constant turn toward the very first of the commandments, which is all about “yes.”

God seeks out our yes because it is most like him; it creates more unto abundance. Within our faith communities — particularly if we are open to hearing the wisdom of those who have come before us, rather than insisting on our own notions — we come to understand this more fully. […] To say yes to God is to say yes to the very essence of what is positive, expansive, and co-creative — and for anything creative to happen, there must first be space. A wonderful Anglican hymn begins, “There is a wideness in God’s mercy.” Both wideness and mercy are formed within yes.